Latif Khalifa has fixed the bug that, since the beginning of time, prevented Hypergrid explorers from jumping to places more than 4096 regions away. No more mandatory intermediate hops! No more “cannot reach destination – too far away” messages!

I encourage all explorers of the Hypergrid to please take a moment and thank Latif on Twitter. His hard work has resulted in a major improvement to the use of the Hypergrid and the evolution of OpenSim as a constellation of easily accessible interconnected grids.

This past weekend I attended and spoke at the very first OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC13). It was an amazing event full of outstanding presentations, great networking opportunities, and spectacular venues with tons of attendees. It was also truly remarkable to see how far OpenSim has evolved and matured as a virtual world platform.

I’ve seen my fair share of online conferences, and this was the most professionally managed and engaging online conference I have ever attended.To everyone involved in making this event a reality, thank you!

And thank you all who attended my presentation. I apologize for not having time to answer all your questions, but if you leave a comment on this blog post I will be very happy to reply.

Please read on for my own presentation summary, video and downloadable slides. You can also watch recordings of all the other presentations in the Conference Archives.

“Exploring the Interconnected: How Past Dreams evolve into Future Reality”

Join us to hear more about how dreams from the past can dramatically change and evolve into something completely new. In this presentation you will hear all about John’s initial experiences in Opensim while still working at Linden Lab, the creation and mangement of “Pathlandia,” initial explorations of the Hypergrid, and how it all fits in with what he remembers as Linden Lab’s original vision of an expanding Metaverse of self-hosted and interconnected virtual worlds.

ADDENDUM 9/10/2013: Be sure to read this blog post: “The Future of Conferences.” It’s an outstanding summary of the conference by Crista Lopes, the inventor of the Hypergrid and one of the conference’s main organizers.

Note: You’ll need the Unity Pro editor if you want to work with Movie Textures in Unity3d.

Unity3d allows you to embed and play videos on any surface in a 3d environment.

This means you can easily create a web-based Jibe world where avatars explore a multiuser 3d virtual space while watching videos or movies playing on screens/signs/any surface you wish.

The most common way to add video to a Unity3d project is by adding a video file to your project’s Asset Folder, which automatically creates a Movie Texture (details here).

However, adding a video file directly to your project means the size of the video file will be added to the final size of your completed Unity webplayer file. In other words, if your video clip is 50 Megabytes large, then your Unity webplayer file will have an extra 50 Megabytes added on to it.

For folks creating Jibe worlds with Unity3d (or anyone creating Unity webplayer files for streaming on the Web) this is not good. You always want your webplayer file to be as small as possible so your webplayer file will finish downloading and start running as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, there’s a way you can download/stream a movie from the Web so it doesn’t add to the size of your Unity webplayer file. Unity will immediately start playing the movie as soon as it has buffered enough of it, similar to how YouTube works.

Here’s a simple example:

Step 1: Get your video ready as an OGG file on the Web

If you have a video on YouTube that you want to use, you’ll have to download it. I suggest using Flash Video Downloader.

Unity needs videos to be in OGG format (file extension .ogg). If you need to convert an existing video file into OGG format, I suggest using VLC (it’s free and cross platform). Take your OGG video, put it on a webserver somewhere and remember the URL.

Important Note: If you’re managing your own webserver, be sure it has the MIME type for Ogg Vorbis enabled. For Extension use .ogg, and for MIME type use application/ogg.

Step 2: Create a Cube

In this example, we’re going to make a basic cube and have the video play on its surface. Of course you could flatten the cube so it looks likes a screen and then place it on a model of a TV or something. I’m just being lazy.

Step 3: Create a new Javascript

I like the name of a script to remind me what the script actually does, so I’m going to call this new script ClicktoPlayWebMovie.

Here’s the code. Copy and paste this into your new script and save it.

You can see at the top of the script that I’ve included my demo URL as the default movie URL. You can always change it later.

Step 4: Add ClicktoPlayWebMovie script to your cube

Drag the ClicktoPlayWebMovie script from your Project folder onto the Cube in your Scene view. This will add the script to the cube.

Now select your Cube in the Scene view and look at the Inspector settings. You can change the movie URL by simply editing the URL field in the Inspector.

Also notice that there is an Audio Source added to the Cube. This was added automatically when you added the script to the Cube, since the script needs an Audio Source component to work. Don’t delete or modify the Audio Source component. Just leave it be.

Step 5: You’re done. Test it out!

You can run your Jibe world locally in the Unity editor and test it out that way. Walk up to the cube and click on it. The movie will start playing on all surfaces of the cube.

The panel was held in Second Life, but the focus of our discussion was firmly on the future of new virtual world platforms and new modalities for immersive learning. We were projected into the physical world meeting room in Chicago where about 30 people attended in person. Here’s a summary:

Still deeply entrenched in Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment, is it time to revisit virtual worlds? Mike Kemmler hosts a virtual panel discussion via Second Life with a distinguished group of virtual world innovators, presenters, consultants, and authors, including Anders Gronstedt, Mark Jankowski, Karl Kapp, and John “Pathfinder” Lester. Panelists address the current state of learning in virtual worlds, explain platforms they see organizations using for immersive learning, and discuss current challenges and future possibilities of using virtual worlds for learning.

Thanks again, Mike, for this great opportunity. It was an honor to be on a panel with such a stellar group of pioneers in virtual worlds and immersive learning.

NOTE: The audio from Second Life is bit choppy for the first 30 seconds, but then clears up perfectly for the rest of the video.

I’ve been invited to attend and speak at the Academic Librarians 2012 Conference at Syracuse University from June 12-13. This conference will be a great opportunity to connect with folks interested in building the future of immersive learning and information literacy.

I think it’s fantastic when educators share experiences like this. It helps educators and students learn from each other, and it also helps virtual world platform providers learn how to make their technology as useful to educators as possible.